Textbooks are expensive. They’re usually $100 each new and a year’s worth of classes could bring the total cost to about $1000. Hefty fee for books that most people end up reselling for half price or less.

Students know that online sites like Half.com and Amazon provide better prices than their school bookstore. New books are hard to gauge, but used prices are definitely better. It’s easy to find a book, since all books have the ISBN number. The problem for me starts there.

My future school, San Francisco State University, does not list book ISBNs anywhere on their site. This doesn’t allow an easy way to search for books (although title and edition work just as well). I think they want to be the sole seller of books and offer most people no choice but to buy from the school. In their delusional minds, buying from Amazon or Half.com hurts the school and students, and therefore it seems they have taken an initiative to hinder the ability to do so.

There’s been several price increases in tuition this year. On Half.com, used textbooks are $50, as opposed to $100. The store’s difference between used and new is only $10 and still bringing the price to the hundreds. How are you helping students by offering them overpriced books? How is the school hurting if textbooks are bought elsewhere? Without that huge markup, the cost will not even been seen by the school. Cut the crap and offer us the real value of the textbooks. If it’s only $70, then sell it at $70, not $100.

If only people knew.

I’m not buying anything but Scantron sheets from the bookstore and maybe cheap $20 workbooks. Every hard-cover textbook will come from an online source.